Forum:Terrain info, opponents' moves and citizen governor
I certainly appreciate all the effort put into Freeciv, and there's a lot of good in the game. In particular, in contrast to all the other Civ games, I notice no real effort to emphasize what is not important: special effects. But I have yet to complete a game, and it looks like I never will, in light of the three biggest drawbacks, which I'll highlight: 1. Terrain info. I read how you obtain this with the middle mouse button. But not all mice have middle buttons! Mine does not, so as far as I can tell, I'm out of luck. A setup more like Civ2 would be preferable -- or at least have a right mouse button option for terrain info. 2. Opponents' moves. Civ2 and Civ3 showed opponents' moves pretty well, while Civ4 was a disaster in this regard. Sadly, Freeciv give me no clue of where the opponent has moved, and, as far as I can see, no options in the settings. A unit may move right next to my city, and I won't know it unless I scan the board. The show combat option helps some, but this has nothing to do with movement. 3. Citizen governor. I could live with the first two, but this one is the clincher. When a city changes in population, all the governor should do is add or remove the new citizen to or from the square it sees fit (or make him an entertainer). That's all. It should NEVER under ANY circumstances rearrange the workers who were already placed. And yet it does this ALL THE TIME. It constantly overrides the decisions I make of which squares I want my workers to work whenever the city's population changes. It reshuffles them all as it sees fit. My governor is turned off, of course, and I've read the help, the documentation, looked at and tinkered with the settings and can find no way around this. It's positively maddening. For crying out loud, this is software development 101. The application should not try to outsmart the human and override his decisions! When I get up to 10, 20 cities, I can't be reviewing them constantly. Unless I've missed something and there's a way around this "feature", I'm afraid Freeciv is unplayable. Bill ----------------------------- 1: i play freeciv on my laptop.. successfully. it does not have a middle button.. but after 20 minutes of slamming the keyboard i found out that pressing left alt + left click has the same effect as middle clicking with a mouse. otherwise, buy a new mouse, maybe laser? 2: set a unit to sentry, like in your cities, fortifying is useless, so sentry them. this way whenever a enemy moves next to them, they activates in your face and asks for orders. 3: i never had any problem with the governer, so i'll just tell you to let it be, or change the governer to max whatever-you-want. Tylan4life 06:48, December 27, 2009 (UTC)